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Traffic jam: the coming cellphone crunch

Smartphone users beware – the days of all-you-can-eat wireless data may be numbered

YOUR connection to YouTube might be the first to go, with increasingly choppy videos that one day just fail to download. In your impatience, you decide to scout out the latest posts in the Twittersphere, except that, too, is temporarily down. Your email’s stalled, and even a simple text is now too arduous, as the world’s phone networks come crashing down. In the following months, it’s almost impossible to get a lasting connection – even for a voice call. Welcome to 2013, and the first mobile meltdown.

Although this is the worst-case scenario, some kind of collapse in the near future is a real possibility. Cellular networks are already showing signs of strain&colon; your phone may temporarily cut out in large crowds or at a sporting event or music gig, and if you live in New York, San Francisco or London, you may have found it increasingly difficult to make calls in your home city. And things have the potential to get a lot worse.

Data-gobbling smartphones are, of course, the source of the problem, as they overload networks with requests for web pages, email and video streaming 24/7. If the use of these devices grows as expected, cellphone networks across the world could grind to a halt by 2013 – and since many core services depend on wireless communication, the results could be devastating. The only solution will be an overhaul of the way mobile communications are delivered.